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fallona's review
5.0
This is a very interesting, surprisingly readable book. It is a biography of Thoreau, but one framed out by looking at his intellectual and literary influences--which makes it, in my view, a lot more interesting than I expected when I first picked it up. It did emphasize how little I actually know about American intellectual and literary history, but gave me a point from which to seek out more (for instance, while I am/was pretty aware of the impact of German idealism on Russian thought, I somehow hadn't realized its impact on American Transcendentalists).
It's a book I think is, for me, worth using as a starting point to do a little more reading on American intellectual history--and then, perhaps, to return to and see what I think of it and what else I pick up from it after broadening my understanding a little more.
It's a book I think is, for me, worth using as a starting point to do a little more reading on American intellectual history--and then, perhaps, to return to and see what I think of it and what else I pick up from it after broadening my understanding a little more.
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